[Tanada]

Alright members, lets try and drag this thread back on topic please.

[C8]

Alright members, lets try and drag this thread back on topic please.

To that end- I am not seeing any common media direction on the Greek mess. Here in the US the NYT and Huffington Post seem very sympathetic to the leftists and attack Germany. Fox, WSJ, most dailies seem to favor the EU position but the networks are pretty much in the middle.

The idea that Greece has been declared an enemy by Western media is false.

[Cid_Yama]

Until a few days ago, the narrative around the Greece crisis was that the damn Greeks should just pay their taxes, repay their debt, and get rid of some of the crazy public spending policies that cosset its citizens. But on July 2, the IMF released this report in which it admits that there was no way Greece could ever pay back its debt, vote or no vote.

Here is the key passage:

At the last review in May 2014, Greece’s public debt was assessed to be getting back on a path toward sustainability, though it remained highly vulnerable to shocks. By late summer 2014, with interest rates having declined further, it appeared that no further debt relief would have been needed under the November 2012 framework, if the program were to have been implemented as agreed. But significant changes in policies since then—not least, lower primary surpluses and a weak reform effort that will weigh on growth and privatization—are leading to substantial new financing needs. Coming on top of the very high existing debt, these new financing needs render the debt dynamics unsustainable ...

The IMF’s report is important because it reveals that the creditors negotiated with Greece in bad faith. For months, a haze was allowed to settle over the question of Greek debt sustainability. The timing of the report’s release—on the eve of a historic Greek referendum, well after the technical negotiations have broken down—suggests that there was no intention to allow a sober analysis of the Greek debt burden. Paul Taylor of Reuters tells us that the European authorities worked hard to suppress it and Landon Thomas of the New York Times reports that, until a few days ago, the IMF had played along.

link


The Troika knew that, even under the Austerity they imposed, Greece would never be able to pay off it's Debt.
They knew this since at least May 2014 and probably much earlier.

In other words, they had knowingly set up Greece as Debt slaves in perpetuity while stripping the country of it's assets.

And tried to suppress that knowledge. Just plain Evil.

[onlooker]

Isn't that what the elites-cabal of the West has been doing since WWII at the very least. Spreading the toxic form of capitalism with it's reliance on creating debt slaves of countries and people. Of privatizing everything and anything. Of bribing those in power. Of imposing austerity as a condition of loans. Of creating the myth of the benefits of globalization for the people conveniently neglecting to reveal that the main beneficiaries of globalization have been corporations who have used the global playground and free trade to lower wages, avoid taxes, avoid environmental responsibility and pitting all against all in a race to the lowest common denominator in terms of worker, citizen and human rights.

[onlooker]

Oh sorry Tanada, just thought my last post has some relevance to this thread.

[kublikhan]

MNC's doing business in China, practicing all the deceptive, cost cutting, worker abusing, consumer abusing, and otherwise immoral and criminal behaviors they are used to getting away with in the West has put them in hot water in China as they Lost Face. They did not live up to the high moral integrity expected by the Chinese people. In a sense, by embarrassing themselves, they embarrassed their host. (The fact that Western corporations and CEOs don't feel embarrassed in the least, just makes it worse.)

This may seem naïve to Westerners, but is of the highest importance in China. Business is not business in China. Business is a part of the total fabric of life in China, part of it's guanxi.
...
Why has it taken so long for Chinese authorities to act? I believe it is because they trusted the corporations to have integrity, so they didn't watch them close enough.

China is more corrupt than the west, more unequal than the west, and cracks down on labor more harshly than in the west. And the authorities did act. Except they did not side with labor, they sided with the corporations by cracking down on labor. The great corruption crackdown you speak of was implemented because of the growing corruption problem in China. This did not stop China from slipping down 20 rungs in the corruption index. Guanxi is not some great moral fiber of the Chinese. It's bribes given out to grease the wheels. Corruption at it's finest. The elites in the east are just as corrupt as the elites in the west, if not more so.

Feeling exploited by businesses and abandoned by the government, workers are organizing strikes and labor protests at a rate that has doubled each of the past four years to more than 1,300 last year, up from just 185 in 2011. "What we are seeing is the forming of China's labor movement in a real sense." All of these actions have been on factory grounds because workers have grown impatient with government mediation rooms or courts.

That's prompted crackdowns by authorities, and factory bosses have fired strike organizers. Although authorities have long ignored labor law violations by companies, activists say authorities now dispatch police - and dogs to factories to restore order or even restart production. They have also detained leading activists and harassed organizations that help workers.

Workers are allowed to strike, but only under the government-controlled All China Federation of Trade Unions - which critics say is essentially an arm of the government that has failed to stand up for workers. Workers who organize on their own can be arrested, not for striking but on charges such as disrupting traffic, business or social order. In Shenzhen, worker representative Wu Guijun was charged with gathering crowds to disrupt traffic, but was released with no conviction after a year in detention.

Deep suspicion of labor activism among authorities is rising. Zhang Zhiru, who runs a small labor group helping workers defend their rights, has been repeatedly harassed by police. He said the government will continue thwarting efforts at labor organizations because it considers them "making trouble." Many labor activists have been harassed and detained.

"They were pulling our hair, smashing cell phones so we could not take photos," said a worker. She was later taken to a police station, where she said she was handcuffed, deprived of sleep and food, and was lectured on her wrong behavior before being freed the next morning. hi, who had been hospitalized after the police raid, said the incident eroded her trust in authorities. "We were hoping the government would be on our side," she said, "but how could we have ever imagined that we would see the police pour in instead."

China's 168 million migrant workers are discovering their labor rights

The income gap between the rich and poor in China has surpassed that of the U.S. and is among the widest in the world. Income inequality almost doubled in China between 1980 and 2010 and now points to a “severe” disparity. The finding conforms to what many Chinese people already say they believe -- in a 2012 survey, they ranked inequality as the nation’s top social challenge, above corruption and unemployment. “If the disparity continues to increase, that is not only bad politically -- it will definitely affect social stability, but is also bad for the economy.”

In 2010, the Gini coefficient for family income in China was about 0.55 compared with 0.45 in the U.S. In 1980, the gauge in China was 0.30. A coefficient of 0.5 or higher indicates a severe gap between rich and poor, according to the report, which also said the Chinese government stopped releasing the data in 2000 when the gauge reached 0.41. “Since the 1980s, the rise of income inequality has been far more dramatic in China than in the U.S.”

China’s Income Inequality Surpasses U.S.

Chinese public opinion surveys identify corruption as the most hated social problem, yet everyone is also guilty of it.

Last year, when my father fell seriously ill, we took him to a decent hospital close by but were told the beds were fully occupied. As always, we turned to our guanxi -- our network of connections -- for help. Fortunately, a relative, a not so senior but well-connected official, managed to secure a private room at the hospital, which is reserved for ranking leaders. In return, the relative agreed to get the son of the hospital director into the most desirable school in Nanjing.

I became aware the weight of guanxi shortly after I was thrust into adulthood: At 16 I was dragged out of the school to work at a military rocket factory. Two months later, when Spring Festival came, my mother requested that I visit my boss' home with gifts she had prepared. Naive and embarrassed, I refused. Mother angrily predicted: "You'll never go far in life if you don't know how to la guanxi!" The verb la means to pull or to develop. Sure enough, I never got any promotion during my decade-long stint at the factory even though I acquired a degree in mechanical engineering.

For any Chinese businessman, guanxi is essential. Recently, I met up with a long-lost friend, with whom I marched in the Nanjing streets back in the spring of 1989 and shouted "Down With Corruption". More than 20 years later, this friend spends 90% of his time running his high-tech company. His youthful idealism has gone and his waistline has expanded considerably. With a ghost of a smile, he blames it on the excessive dining, drinking and occasional visits to prostitutes that are part of the tiresome game of guanxi. "Your business can't survive a day if you are not corrupt."

He has to smooth every step of his business with gifts or outright bribes: From obtaining the business license, to entertaining potential clients, to receiving 15% of the tax deduction that a high-tech company is entitled to. He estimates that 3% to 5 % of operating costs goes to guanxi.

In China, 'everyone is guilty of corruption'

Despite a well-publicized campaign to combat graft and crack down on corrupt public officials, China has lost the shine on its halo, being labeled more corrupt this year than it was in 2013. China posted one of the worst rises in corruption of any country in this year's "Corruption Perceptions Index".

Chinese corruption worse, despite drive: Report

[StarvingLion]

Since the "citizen" backstops all the business corruption in both the "west" and the "east", capitalism is a figment of the imagination of the retarded especially the suckers who haven't been bankrupted yet.

Even the clueless educated people have figured that out finally:

http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/?p=1618#more-1618

"...western governments are willing to assume risks on behalf of the private sector, at very substantial cost to the taxpayer when those risks go wrong, but only in the financial services sector. I don’t think these can be described either as technical risk or as market risk – stupidity and greed risk seems a more appropriate description."

"To speak of the UK, I now find it very difficult to discern any long term strategic goals of the government at all."

Sure there is a goal, Mr. Jones,...its stripping you of your properties, rights, opportunities, ..etc. Thats why the UK is a great big steaming pile of crap.

[Cid_Yama]

Back to topic:

No Wins by Landslide

Greece lurched into uncharted territory and an uncertain future in Europe's common currency Sunday after voters overwhelmingly rejected demands by international creditors for more austerity measures in exchange for a bailout of its bankrupt economy.

Results showed 61 percent voted "no," compared with 38 percent for "yes," with 97 percent of the vote counted. The referendum — Greece's first in more than four decades — came amid severe restrictions on financial transactions in the country, imposed last week to stem a bank run that accelerated after the vote was called.

Thousands of jubilant government supporters celebrated in Syntagma Square in front of Parliament, waving Greek flags and chanting "No, no, no!"

Early trading on Asian markets indicated investors were alarmed, as stock indexes fell.

It was a decisive victory for Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who had gambled the future of his 5-month-old coalition government — and his country — in an all-or-nothing game of brinkmanship with Greece's creditors from other European countries that use the euro currency, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.

"Today we celebrate the victory of democracy," Tsipras said in a televised address to the nation, describing Sunday as "a bright day in the history of Europe."

"Given the unfavorable conditions last week, you have made a very brave choice," Tsipras told Greeks in his address. "But I am aware that the mandate you gave me is not a mandate for rupture." He said he would seek to negotiate a viable solution with the country's creditors.

Yiannis Gkovesis, 26, waved a large Greek flag in the capital's main square with supporters of the "no" vote.

"We don't want austerity measures anymore. This has been happening for the last five years and it has driven so many into poverty, we simply can't take any more austerity," Gkovesis said.

Constantinos Papanikolas, 73, who also clutched a Greek flag, said the result meant "a fresh start, a new page for Greece and for Europe, which has condemned its people to poverty."

Greece will stay in the EU. Whether they like it or not. And keep their VETO.

[StarvingLion]

I bet the "productive" germans are now rioting in the streets. No, actually they are not rioting at all. Everything is subsidized in the fiat scam economy so who gives a flying f....just import another 100 million people to tax and "prosperity" is guaranteed.

[ralfy]

"Greece – What You are not Being Told by the Media"

http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/07/0 ... the-media/

[onlooker]

thank you Ralfy for posting that brilliant article describing the manipulations without shame or limit by the Banks for the sake of their profits. Hey they start wars for profit. Truly a horror story if ever their was one.